Sunday, February 3, 2013

Silver Lining Turns into Tempest

I'm a semi-finalist for a contract position in my field. I had given up all hope for any kind of interview this late in the game, but the application I sent off after the holidays as a Hail Mary must have hit all the right notes.

However, sensing this job was too good to be true, I did a bit of investigating. What tipped me off initially was the large quantity of positions open at the institution. Sadly, my suspicions were correct: this institution has been listed on the "Universities to Fear" part of the job wiki, and a simple Google search reveals multiple scandals over the past ten years. Bad scandals. Shocking scandals. Made-for-TV-movie scandals.

It seems this place wants to clean up its image and salvage its accreditation. If the process goes any further and I manage to get an interview, I'm torn about whether to pursue the position or not. This late in the job market game, it looks like my only real opportunity, and although it is away from my partner, it is not the cross-country commute that we had been doing prior. The pay is very, very reasonable. Handsome compared to what I have been earning the past several years. Tempting. Soul-selling tempting.

Is it better to be kept and bored than to risk going to a toxic department and environment? What would Yaro do?

16 comments:

I think you should pursue the interview and find out how the department is trying to change. Ask questions about this. They must know that others are worried about it. I think it's fair game for discussion.

If they've purged a lot of faculty and hare hiring many fresh new faces, you could help steer the department in a better direction.

On the other hand, you might be the only new person they are hiring, a token fresh face so that people ignore the fact that it's business as usual. In that case, I'd still take the job. It pays the bills and you can look elsewhere while you're on the job.

What The Beaker said. The only way to figure out what's going on, and how you'll feel about it, is to go through the process. If you don't like the answers you get from them, you can always turn it down an eventual offer. But to preemptively dismiss it out of fear/principle would be to act rashly. The info you've gathered tells you something about what's gone on there in the past, not what's going on now. If it turns out that it is still a pit, you'll know what to do.

If a psychopath invites you to the prom, you're not going to say, "Mom, what do you think? Should I go to the prom with this guy? He used to be a psychopath, but I think maybe he's changing for the better. I think he's turning over a new leaf. He says he is. I want to take a chance with him."

This q&a is very timely, as I consider changing schools. One place has 3 TT openings. But it is also a place whose board tried to adopt the Horowitz "bill of rights," which is a pretty big red flag. Hmmm....

Yikes! I hadn't seen that thing, but I googled it. It starts off sounding benign enough (diversity of perspectives, etc.), but then it starts claiming that all knowledge in the humanities and social sciences is "unsettled," and that individual researchers should be "left free to reach their own conclusions about which methods, facts, and theories have been validated by research." It sounds like the academic version of "fair and balanced": if anybody thinks something might be true, that argument should get equal time (and if "anybody" is a Ph.D., equal academic validity). As I read it, it would be very hard to refuse tenure (assuming they allow it) and/or continued employment to, say, a holocaust denier, or someone who insisted that slaves fought in large numbers for the confederacy, or that slavery did no significant harm to slaves. There's a nod to the role of departments and professional organizations in judging the value of scholarship, and to the idea of "substantive" scholarship/disagreement, but I'm pretty sure that the idea of "neutrality" would trump.

A big question: did the board succeed? Is their governance structure such that they might succeed? I can't imagine the established faculty at any place where there's still a healthy faculty governance structure letting this thing undermine established methods of evaluating scholarship.

I agree that going ahead with the interview can't hurt. Beyond that, I'd think hard about how much this job would aid you in building up transferable scholarly capital (i.e. research and publications) vs. how much time you'd spend doing things that would only "count" (to the extent they count at all) within the institution. Even a toxic environment can be a steppingstone to a better job, if it provides resources for research and publications. On the other hand, even an absolutely lovely, collegial environment can be deceptively dangerous if you're a contingent spending all your time on teaching and/or service, and then some change in the larger structure of things leads to the elimination of your job. The worst of both worlds, of course, would be doing all the teaching/service heavy lifting in a toxic environment, while the creators of said toxic environment teach a light load and publish. Since you describe this as a contract job, there's some danger of your landing in that "worst of both worlds"' scenario.

Also, I'm sure you know this, but salaries that look high are often paid in places where the cost of living is *very* high. At the very least, check out housing costs for yourself (and, unless you have an absolute guarantee written into your contract, assume you won't make it into any subsidized faculty housing that might be available).

Also -- while it's late in the year for TT searches, it's early in the year (at least in my field) for visiting/other contractual positions. Do you have any way of figuring out what the calendar really looks like these days in your field?

And finally, congratulations! Yes, they're looking for a lot of people, but there are a lot of people looking for jobs. And they picked you to interview. Whether it's a good job or not, whether you take it or not, it's still a positive indication of your marketability. If your partner is willing, maybe spending the next 8 months or so publishing and polishing your application materials, and then trying again in the fall, would be a viable plan?

Is there any reason to believe that similar scandals, or even the ones you mention, would affect you? On the other hand, might the institutional environment favor a greater concern for stability, meaning that you might even have a better chance at something more permanent? Anyway, a job in the hand....

Years ago I had an offer from a very much red flag school (it took the Supreme Court to have them admit women) and I was told, in the department where I was finishing my doctorate, that this would be a "terminal job," in the sense that I would be tainted and unhireable if I took it.Fortunately, I had an offer elsewhere...Tough choice.

First, thanks for mentioning the"U's to fear" wiki; I didn't know about it, and it's amazing the schools you find there.

Now, on your dilemma, I'm with Beaker Ben: go through with the interview, take the job if offered. (Or as Southern Bubba would say, go to the prom with the psycho if nobody else asked you, but pack the pepper spray.) Unless, that is, they're so tainted that doing so would make you "unclean" (see French Prof.)

On the other hand, as I tell my assistant prof colleagues (those I like): until you're tenured, you should basically regard yourself as being "on the market" every year; if not formally, at least in the sense of intensive networking and well-placed buttkissing. If a better place has an opening and you have contacts, apply for it. Loyalty to institutions is rarely repaid . You're not married to a TT job until they sign off on your tenure.

This one ought to be right up there with "don't care more about your students' educations than they do" as a CM mantra. Very, very, very true, especially for contingent faculty, but also, I'm pretty sure, for the TT folks as well.

What Was This?

College Misery was a dysfunctional group blog where professors got the chance to release some of the frustration that built up while tending to student snowflakes, helicopter parents, money mad Deans, envious colleagues, and churlish chairpeople.

Our parent site, Rate Your Students, started in 2005, and we continued that mission beginning in 2010. Ben at Academic Water Torture and Kimmie at The Apoplectic Mizery Maker both ran support blogs during periods when this blog had died.